Monday, March 28, 2005

TECT Softwares Stored Procedure Generator (SPGen) has been designed to create standard procedures for most tables.

Currently SPGen makes no modifications to any database, instead itcreates a script which you can execute against your database.

Pricing:

SPGen is currently in beta and each build is time limited (it will expire after a specified period of time), cost for this product is yet to be determined, however like all our products we will offer the following discounts to Firebird Foundation members, when the product is released:

Beta participation is open to everyone, to get involved simply download a copy of SPGen, all bug reports or feature requests can be submitted directly using our online helpdesk or join our mail list at Yahoo.

Sunday, March 27, 2005

JVCS team announces the third of the JVCS 2.40 server ports. RC4 introduces support for Oracle10, Firebird characterset configuration possibility, server banner configuration possibility for service ports and a few bug fixes. For download please navigate to the files section on Sourceforge.

Friday, March 25, 2005

- rewritten error handling- several fixes and enhancements to the built-in functions- oracle style '' equals NULL, and NULL equals '' now supported (only when connected in oracle-mode, of course)- auto-casting of strings to numerals (i.e. 1 '2') now supported (only when connected in oracle-mode, of course)- further fixes to handling of scaled integers- handling of "insert into ... select ..." fixed

Version 0.8.6 contains fixes for all errors that have beenreported to the Fyracle newsgroup.

The recommended upgrade procedure is to firstuninstall any previous versions of Fyracle and onlythen to install the new 0.8.6 release. Rememberto save your configuration files (firebird.confand aliases.conf) if you changed them!

The uninstaller has a start menu entry on Windowsand can be found at the top of the installdirectory on Linux and Windows.

Compiere:

The current Compiere demo is still 2.5.1g The lastupgrade to these files was on Feb 1st. A port ofCompiere 2.5.2 is underway.

JVCL 3.00 is out. It is available at SourceForge. We encourage users of JVCL 2.10 to migrate to it as this is the stable release for JVCL 3. Should any bug still be present, please report them in Mantis after having registered a user name.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

24.03.2005 -Just like previous releases, packages contain only the binaries andneeded files. No ReadMEs, Installers, Release Notes, Manual, etc. Thisis for those who wish to taste the current CVS version withouthaving to compile everything.Features: -a lot of fixes and enhancement of SQL Editor -many new configuration options (most even work :) -logging to files worksKnown bugs:- if SELECT statement does not fetch all rows, and you press "Show plan", the error message pops-up. It it (seems) harmless, so you can keep working.Download: http://www.flamerobin.org/test/0.2.4/

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

So which are the Open Source databases? Most readers have probably heard of MySQL. Its byline is The World's most popular Open Source database after all. There is also PostgreSQL (The World's Most Advanced Open Source Database), as well as Firebird (The Relational Database for the New Millenium). However, there are others too. BerkeleyDB, although not directly comparable, deserves a mention, while Computer Associates recently released Ingres, and IBM did the same to Cloudscape (under the name Derby).

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Microsoft has delayed the release date for SQL Server 2005 by about 6 months, perhaps acting on reports of poor high-end performance. A new release of the development tools was delayed as well. Those waiting may use the time to switch to Firebird instead.

The Firebird Project is pleased to announce the release today of the first Firebird 2.0 public Alpha kits for immediate download and testing.

This version of Firebird 2 is an alpha version, meant for field testing only and not for use in production.All changes and new features are subject to further change and/orwithdrawal in subsequent alpha and beta releases, leading up to finalrelease. Do not assume that databases created by or upgraded to the on-diskstructure of this alpha will be upwardly compatible with subsequent testbuilds/releases.

This release contains a large number of new features, includingderived tables, support for Execute Block, increased table sizes,new improved index code (the 252-byte index length limit is no longerapplicable), expression indices, numerous optimiser improvements,enhanced security features, support for on-line incremental backupsalong with numerous other improvements and bug fixes. Please readthe Release Notes for more details.

The following builds are currently available, with others to follow soon:Win32

Monday, March 21, 2005

>From: WebHub Technical Support >Subject: [WebHub-list] off-topic: praise for Firebird Relational Database>>"Interbase Deleted, Firebird Installed... Existing Apps Work without Effort">>This is one of those rare stories where software works perfectly, the way>it should. It's possibly relevant to people on this list so I'll give you>some details.>>I started with a machine running WinNT 4, Interbase (June 2000), 1 WH app>using a .gdb, 1 other Delphi app using a .gdb. (all on same machine)>>I backed up the server. You would have too, if you knew what was planned.>>I shut down the apps. I stopped IIS.>>I tried to uninstall Interbase but the uninstaller failed, so I stopped>Interbase in Control Panel > Services, then deleted c:\Program>Files\Borland\Interbase\*.*.>>I found the Firebird 1.5 stable installer here:>http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_download_15 ,>specifically>> 25th Dec 2004> Official> Windows Setup and Installer For Classic and SuperServer V1.5.2 (.exe) (2.7mb)> which leads to>>http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/firebird/Firebird-1.5.2.4731-Win32.exe>>I ran the installer. Of course I forgot whether I was supposed to choose>Classic or SuperServer. I found this page>http://www.firebirdsql.org/manual/qsg15-classic-or-super.html and decided>on Superserver. NOTE SUPERSERVER IS THE DEFAULT RADIO BUTTON CHOICE. I>find it easy to remember "use the defaults" ... hint.>>I used all the defaults for installation, aside from the folder location>(used d: ... not c: ...).>>The install finished with no errors. I checked Services and Firebird was>running. So far so good.>>I tested the WH app, it worked, no complaints. (Thanks to the TurboPress>developers for that part.)>>I rebooted the machine, it restarted everything including the WebHub App>and the Delphi app, and BOTH WORKED without any reconfiguration of any sort.>>I was so pleased I had to tell you. Best of luck to anyone who tries this>at home.>>Cheers,>Ann>

Saturday, March 19, 2005

From Seppy's investigations so far, it's looking very likely that all of the Delphi for .NET language support will work in CF without major modification. He's got the core RTL up and running and is working on fleshing out the rough spots. Using the Delphi language to build WinForms apps on CF is a sure thing.

JEDI.NET 1.0 alpha 1 has been released and can be downloaded from:http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=111655&package_id=147053&release_id=312857.

Besides a source release (containing all sources for theassemblies, examples and nunit tests) a binary only release is available as well (build against .NET 1.1 and Delphi 2005 update 1; for non-Delphi 2005 owners the Borland.Delphi assembly can be downloaded from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/jedidotnet/Borland.Delph_2k5-SP1.zip?download; you'll need to install it into the GAC or put it in the main/bin and main/examples/bin folders).

In addition, two help files are available, one as a .chm file andone in Help2 format. You can also browse the help on line at http://jedidotnet.sourceforge.net/help/index.html.

+ added Greek resources+ added HTML tags support in PDF export+ added Hebrew, Turkish and Arabic languages in the PDF export filter+ added property TfrxPDFExport.Background (default = False)+ added properties TfrxRTFExport.Creator and TfrxPDFExport.Creator+ improved quality of the PDF export filter+ password protected reports is now working in client/server mode (IMPORTANT: Do not use this feature in one time with the server authentification)+ verbose output of the server errors in the HTML mode- fixed name of the properties TfrxServerConnection.Proxy and TfrxServerConnection.ProxyPort (press 'ignore' button on load prompt in yours projects for autofix form components)- fixed clean of the report cache on TfrxReportServer.Stop method- fixed background draw in HTML export filter in server mode- many bug fixesDownload...

The entire realm of open-source software could get a performance boost if all goes well with a plan to overhaul a crucial programming tool called GCC.

Almost all open-source software is built with GCC, a compiler that converts a program's source code--the commands written by humans in high-level languages such as C--into the binary instructions a computer understands. The forthcoming GCC 4.0 includes a new foundation that will allow that translation to become more sophisticated, said Mark Mitchell, the GCC 4 release manager and "chief sourcerer" of a small company called CodeSourcery.

"The primary purpose of 4.0 was to build an optimization infrastructure that would allow the compiler to generate much better code," Mitchell said.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Features of actual version

Unicode support for Windows&Linux without depending on any additional library or component package.

Added new unit SynUnicode that contains Unicode versions of often used string-functions. It's TWideStrings & TWideStringsList-classes were taken from JCL, adapted and cleansed to be cross-plattform and less code-bloating.

Optional symbiosis with often used libraries like JclUnicode or TntUnicode-controls through compiler directives. (see SynEdit.inc) JclUnicode can be interesting if you want advanced features that are Windows-dependent but adds 140KB to exe-size. TntUnicode-controls provide Unicode-property-editors at design-time at no cost but must be installed(= available), so it is not used by default.

Support of Unicode on Win9X.

All Highlighters were translated. (They use now collision free hashing)

All additional SynEdit components are unicode-enabled.

Storing files as UTF-8, UTF-16 or Ansi.

Known Issues

This is not really a SynEdit issue: The TeX-Exporter doesn't support Unicode as LaTeX2e doesn't support it either. There are many half-backed solutions but none offers real Unicode support. LaTeX 3 is said to support this (whenever it is released). Note: RTF and HTML exporters fully support Unicode.

What's new?

All Demos were ported to work with UniSynEdit.

SynGen now creates highlighters compatible with UniSynEdit and was enhanced to support collision free hashing and better FuncXXX naming (now is derived from the keyword instead of the key).

All fixes from ANSI version were applied.

All other fixes for Unicode SynEdit are included as well, for details see CVS log.

In non-tech, we are having an interesting discussion about the evolution of the Delphi language. Someone there is arguing that Delphi isn't evolving fast enough for him -- that's cool, to each his own -- but he's also arguing that it isn't really evolving at all, and that C++ is evolving faster. Now that is ridiculous. As part of the discussion, we've made a list of the language innovations, additions, and evolutions since the TurboPascal days. Here's the list so far:

DUnit automates unit testing of Delphi code. The target audience for DUnit is developers who are both writing the code to be tested and the unit tests for that code, an approach advocated by Extreme Programming. Dunit is based on the product JUnit.

Fulltext Search for Firebird SQL article on Code Project(spoted on dotnetfirebird.org)"In this article, we will talk about searching the data in a Firebird database using DotLucene full-text search engine. We will focus on storing the index directly in the database"http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/FulltextFirebird.asp

IDC reports that the market for relational databases grew 12% to $15 billion in 2004. Oracle holds 41%, DB2 holds 30% and SQLServer holds 13% (measuring by value). The report says that Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft are looking for new ways to compete in the market for small and midsize business and departmental systems, one of the fastest-growing areas of the database market. Hey, that is our market too...Read more

Friday, March 04, 2005

eWeek's pundits discuss which open source database to choose. About Firebird they say: "Sizzling transactional performance, ease of installation, enterprise-class features (triggers, views, stored procedures)." But also: "No enterprise-level support, but very good, knowledgeable community support." You can listen to a 1 hour session discussing these slides via this link.

The Firebird Project will soon be releasing the first public "alpha"release of Firebird 2.0. Version 2.0 is a long-awaited important majorrelease of Firebird with many new features, enhancements andbugfixes (see alpha Release Noteshttp://firebird.sourceforge.net/download/prerelease/rnotes0200_01.zipfor details). In number of changes, the jump in this release is equivalentif not greater than the transition from version 1.0 to version 1.5.

You know that we care about quality, and that we will not release thefinal version 2.0 until it meets our strict QA requirements. For version1.5, it took about a year before we were satisfied. But this time we arein a slightly different situation.

The Vulcan project reached the *general usability milestone*, with onlya few loose ends left, and we would like to merge both codebases assoon as possible. This merge should result in Firebird 3.0 with fullSMP support, unified architecture (no more separateclassic/superserver/embedded builds) and other enhancements (seehttp://www.ibphoenix.com/downloads/VulcanOverview.pdf for details).Beside clear benefits for Firebird users, this merge will result incleaner and concise architecture and codebase, and will complete ourtransition from old procedural C code to fully OOP C++ code. This willopen gates for developers to design and implement more complex featureslike namespaces, temporary tables and other much requested features.

But we can't fully focus on the Firebird/Vulcan merge before the finalFirebird 2.0 is released, hence we would like to shorten the QA phaseas much as possible, but without compromising our strict qualityrequirements for final release. We *can* do that by making our QAprocess more effective. The effectiveness of the Firebird QA processheavily depends on feedback from end users, so it's natural for ourquest for more effective QA to start with it.

So far, user feedback was random and fully in the hands of end users.Basically, we would release a build, wait for feedback for some timeand solve the reported issues (along with other issues we did findinternally over that period). If no important issues werefound/reported since the last Release Candidate build, that build wasrepackaged as final. Of course, there are also alpha and beta stagesthat follow this pattern too, but differ in what developers areallowed to change in the ncode.

While this routine has worked nicely for us in the past, it has animportant drawback: We don't know how much the build is tested infield, in both scale and functionality coverage. We can only guessapproximate figures based on download count, direct feedback, hearsay,development stage etc. to estimate the "quality index". We also haveonly one gauge to work with: time, hence the long release cycle.

To improve on that, we would like to initiate a managed field-testsprogram, starting from Firebird 2.0. This managed field-test *willnot* replace the *usual* field-test scenario (or internal testing),but should work as a complement to other QA routines we use. Theobjective of managed field-test is to collect precise informationabout field-test (i.e. how the released build was tested and with whatoutcome), so we can better estimate the outcome of the QA process,focus on open gaps in QA and thus allocate our QA resources moreprecisely, so eventually we would build our trust in quality of codemore quickly.

The participation in managed field-test is very simple. You need tosign-in by e-mail to , where you'll describehow you would like to test our releases. We prefer any testing methodthat is close to real use. This means that if you have an applicationthat runs with Firebird, you can simply take it on a "test drive" withthe new Firebird release in some testing environment, preferably withreal-world data. Of course, you can pick up any testing method youlike, and you can even focus only on a particular area you're mostinterested in (for example performance, backup/restore, new features,optimizer etc.). You must also describe what Firebird flavour(s)(CS/SS/Embedded) and platform(s) you want to test. We will send you anotification whenever a new filed-test build is available, and we willexpect a report from you about the outcome (either good or bad) ofyour tests.

We know that such commitment may not be easy to fulfil, so it'spossible that you may skip testing of the field-test release or leavethe program altogether at any point, so we will reward those who helpus! We have created a "prize pool" that right now contains a FirebirdT/polo-shirt in color and shape of your choice from IBPhoenix, but webelieve that we'll get more prizes into this pool before Firebird 2.0final release. At the end of the release cycle, we will reward themost "active" tester(s) and one randomly selected tester.

The managed field-test program is open to anyone, at any time point inthe release cycle (starting from fist alpha till last RC), but those whosign-in early will have better chance to get a reward for their help.

"We recognize the value that the Open Source database community brings." Said David Lee, CEO of Advent Consulting. "With the strength of MySQL, Firebird SQL and PostgreSQL database deployments in the enterprise and of the greater open source movement as a whole, Advent Consulting is addressing the growing demand for open source database supports with a single source, traditional proprietary methods of escalating professional support services for all three leading open source database."

"Our goal is to provide the best out of open source database solutions to our clients with greater confidence. With this program, the database administrator (DBA) and developer can easily and productively escalating support for their open source (RDBMS) on MySQL, Firebird SQL and PostgreSQL from one convenient source." said Mr. Lee.

Subscriptions plan will be available for a range of required service levels - from basic system updates with automatic escalation procedures, to 24/7 live production support with remote administration on both Linux and Windows environments.

The professionals at Advent Consulting provide a range of services and supports necessary for organizations to leverage the benefits of open source software including consulting, research, migration, integration, customized development and support.

This is a comparison between free open-source database software solutions actually avalaible. I want to thanks all the sofware developers for developing such a great software for the open source community.